Nightwing (29 page)

The rock shelf itself was granite, harder than limestone. With a piton, Paine searched out a vertical fissure and then hammered the piton into the fissure. He tied his two fifty-foot ropes together, making a single hundred-foot length. One end, he tied to the piton. The other end, he knotted in a bowline through the canister handle. He twisted the timer on the canister valve. Every complete revolution set back the Cyanogas spray sixty minutes; he gave the timer twelve full turns, its limit.

Then, he turned the canister on its side and, lying on his stomach, started to roll it up the dome to the sinkhole. The granite shelf was fifty feet from the sinkhole; the tank would hang fifty feet below the sinkhole into the cave, well out of the bats’ way when they returned, and when Paine would spread the net and throw the battery switch and wait. Until 7:45
A.M.
, to be precise, when the first lethal vapor of the canister would rise. Nothing could be simpler.

Stars came out in clusters of light. Paine rolled the canister slowly up the dome. At the lip of the sinkhole, he gave the tank a final push that tilted it into the cave. He grabbed the rope and let it play through his hand gradually, lowering the tank. Cautiously, he moved away from the sinkhole, halfway down the dome, before he played any more rope through his hand.

The rope stopped. The heavy tank was only about ten feet down into the cave, Paine estimated, but the rope must have snagged on something at the lip of the sinkhole. He tugged the rope. It wouldn’t move.

Paine crawled back up the cave dome. Underneath his hands and knees, he felt the anxious scuttling of the infant bats, unsettled by the ominous appearance of the tank. “Patience,” he whispered to them.

At the sinkhole, he found the problem. The rope had cut into and stuck in the soft limestone of the lip. He didn’t like resting all his weight on his knees, but he pulled the rope free and raised the tank to set the rope at a different place.

There was another problem he saw as the tank rose. Somehow, the rope from the handle had twisted around the valve and jammed the timer. Paine lifted the canister gently out of the cave and set it on the edge of the sinkhole.

A single yank loosened the rope and Paine freed the valve. He lowered the tank into the cave again, watching with satisfaction as it descended into the dark, playing the rope tenderly until the canister had vanished, gently swinging in the shadows.

Paine leaned back and took a deep breath.

He heard the dome crack around him. He was already twisting as the sinkhole widened and the limestone under him dropped away. His hands clutched at rocks that crumbled with each grasp into a pale sand that streamed over him.

Paine fell. Feet first, to begin with. Then he spread his arms and legs like a man soaring and dark blew into his face. In front of him, he saw the canister rope measuring his dive.

He stopped short swinging fifty feet below the sinkhole. His wrist was tangled in the rope at the canister handle. The canister rocked coldly against his cheek, which was crushed over an eye. He tried to raise himself, but the arm caught in the rope was pulled out of his shoulder socket. His other arm couldn’t reach around the canister.

He dangled.

The babies scuttled around the ceiling. In time, though, they settled down and waited.

Along with Paine.

C H A P T E R
N I N E

“H
e didn’t make it,” Youngman said. “He’d be back by now if he made it.”

The two stars of Natupkom, Castor and Pollux, swung high overhead. Rising from the earth was Talawsohu, the Morning Star. Twice during the night, he and Anne had followed the flight of the bats. Their departure by sight. Their return, five hours later, by Paine’s oscilloscope. That was five hours ago.

“I told him to wait.”

“Paine knows what he’s doing. Here, eat something, you look terrible.” She offered him a slice of bread smeared with margarine. “I’m sorry that’s all that’s left. And some beers.”

He shook his head. Even in the green glow of the scope, his skin was tinged with the ash of fatigue.

“He would have shot us if we went after him.”

“He won’t shoot any more, he’s past that.”

“He’s all right. The best thing we can do is get to the highway so Chee will know to send a helicopter here and pick Paine up.”

Youngman turned the radio on again. The stations in Tuba City no longer played music. Long periods of dead air were punctuated by bulletins. Tuba City was nearing its second day of quarantine . . . Fifteen dead at Shongopovi, twelve at Walpi . . . Utah and New Mexico state lines were closed . . . the evacuation of Flagstaff was orderly . . . the situation was in hand . . .

“I’m going out to watch.” Youngman kissed Anne’s hand. “Let me know if you see anything on the screen.”

He got out and stood in back of the Rover, looking up the road. Paine wasn’t coming back. Instead of leaving for the cave when he should have, Paine had overstayed on the ridge. Even asleep, Youngman had done as Abner had asked. As Abner had predicted, how long ago? A week? Only that long? And a week from now, who or what would be left? What would have happened to anyone if a week ago a deputy had been able to read a dead man’s sand painting?

As Youngman felt for a cigarette, his bandaged hand fell on his pocket. He drew out the datura root.

On his own, Youngman knew he didn’t have the strength to go to the cave. He could barely walk and his hands were almost useless.

If only Paine had been right. If Paine had been the one man who could stop the bats.

Youngman bit into the root. The largest bite he could manage, although he didn’t know how much he could handle. If he poisoned himself, Anne would drive him out of the canyon. If it was narcotic, they could go after Paine. What was there to lose? He let the bitterness pour down his throat.

After Talawsohu came Ponochona, the Dog Star, and night was complete, darkest before dawn. All night ceremonies ended with the appearance of Ponochona, and then the priests would wait for the sun to tell them whether the ceremonies had been carried out correctly. One error would cause the rising sun to bring in its right hand a rainbow of reversed colors. Youngman waited, his arms and legs rigid, his mouth open, his heart slowing with every beat. His head lolled against the truck and his eyes followed the course of the stars, bright bats wheeling in a middle distance. The lights were all colors and in between were mixed auras, like colored grains of sand. He measured out minutes to the rare beats of his heart. A morning breeze blew on the left side of his face and traced its way with infinite slowness to the right. Showers of turquoise obscured the stars and then the desert burst into flames that leaped from end to end of the eastern horizon. The canyon began sailing into the flames.

The flames covered Youngman and warmed him like a light blanket of gold. His body burned up and released him, letting him float upward. For a long time, he enjoyed nothingness, and for a long time he felt consciousness returning. Below him he found the world spinning slowly between two kachinas, one with a face of clouds and the other tarnished brown by the sun. They bowed to Youngman and gave the world a push.

The world was different. An ocean lapped against a canopy of trees. Between the trees he could see familiar rows of corn and elsewhere were square obelisks and temples like statues alive with stone faces of tigers and snakes and bats writhing, their mouths gaping. The corn was fat and the wells were full of clear water but the people were leaving, walking along the axis of the earth for hundreds of years until they stopped at an inland sea surrounded by volcanoes. On the sea islands grew pyramids and on the pyramids formed steps mounted by blood-encrusted priests and guarded by soldiers dressed as animals. Yet some of the people left again, again walking the world’s axis north until they reached the edge of a desert. Under his eyes new cities grew. Mesa Verde, Aztec, Wupatki, Keet Seel. Each built and at the height of its prosperity abandoned until the people were gathered for their last great migration into the desert itself. Into four groups they divided themselves and in four directions they left, making a cross over the land until more hundreds of years passed and they wheeled right, forming a swastika. As this swastika wheeled, they broke into smaller groups, all returning but all moving in circles until the land was a giant’s pattern of moving swastikas and serpentines. A pueblo would live for an instant. Another group would find it and a spiral map of their predecessors’ path and then turn in the opposite direction, one eddy twisting from another, yet always directed to the finally permanent gathering at the center of the world. And there at the rim of the Black Mesa they finally did appear, at Oraibi and Hotevilla and Shongopovi, without water, without fertile land, without friends, at the mercy of their gods.

Youngman saw himself, on his back, hands and feet outstretched, and covering the desert spinning slowly within a nimbus of yellow light.

He had finally arrived. He was ready.

“Feeling better?” Anne joined him.

“More myself.”

He took a deep, comfortable breath. The breeze of the dawn swayed a ringlet of soft hair at her temple and the slanting rays of the sun made her blue-brown eyes luminous.

“You know, you’re very beautiful.” He got up.

“Yes, that’s more like yourself. Come on, we’d better get ready if we’re going to go.”

She climbed on the hood and handed down the unidirectional microphone to Youngman, who stowed the mike, amplifier, and oscilloscope in the rear of the truck. The equipment was almost weightless to Youngman. He looked at his hands and peeled off the bandages.

“What are you doing?” Anne saw the open cuts.

“Anne, I know how to stop them. I’m going to the cave.”

“You don’t know where it is.”

“I have an idea.”

“Paine is—”

“Paine is dead. It’s day, Anne. He’s not back because he’s dead. Isn’t he?”

“If he is,” she faltered, “it’s all the more reason for us to go. I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“You didn’t. Believe me, you didn’t.”

Two hours before, he’d been almost in shock. The Youngman she saw now was casually using mutilated hands to remove his shirt.

“That was a very fast recovery, Youngman. Just about unbelievable. What is your idea?”

“Abner opened the ring. I’m going to shut it again.”

“ ‘Shut the ring?’ That doesn’t make any sense to me, Youngman. You’re talking like a medicine man. Make sense.”

“You mean, something called Cyanogas made sense.” Youngman ripped the back from his shirt to tie it Hopi-fashion around his head.

“Yes.”

“Paine made sense?”

“Yes.”

“And Paine is dead.”

Anne caught her words behind her teeth. The raw light of the rising sun threw blue shadows of the Rover and Youngman and her from the edge of the ridge to across the road. Youngman was talking suddenly on different levels.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Don’t understand. All I want is your trust.”

“But how can I trust you when I don’t understand what you are doing?”

“That’s why it’s called trust. Your trust in something unscientific and unwhite. Don’t you think it’s about time we found out whether you do?”

“This is a good time,” she agreed. “It’s very unfair. We could hardly stay together if I say ‘No’ right now. It’s unfair because I love you.”

“Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

Anne walked away so as not to see him. He decided to give her five minutes to make up her mind. She returned after only one.

‘‘Let me put it this way,” she said. “At the moment, for asking me a question like that, I don’t love you, I hate you. I’ll go with you, though. I wouldn’t let you go without me.”

Which was not the same thing as complete trust, Youngman knew. But, a start.

The road had been built for high-wheeled Mexican ox carts, not a Land Rover. Although Youngman released some air from the tires and gained a couple of inches in roof clearance, hours were lost hacking with a shovel against crowding sandstone walls and low natural bridges. He didn’t care how slow their progress was, how much backing up and road clearing they had to do; if Anne was going with him Youngman was determined to bring the shelter of the truck as well.

It was midday, halfway to exhaustion, when they came to the end of the road.

“What is it?” Anne pulled the hand brake.

“A mine.”

“I never heard of a mine up here.”

“Well, it hasn’t been used for a while.” He intercepted the question in her eyes. “About two hundred years.”

As they got out of the Rover, Anne began to call for Paine and Youngman stopped her.

“We’ll find him.”

An ancient wooden wheel rested by the mouth of the mine entrance. There was no sign of Paine and the ground was too hard to pick up tracks. Anne looked anxiously around the cliffs that crowded against the narrow road. Along the edges of the cliffs, dark lava outcrops looked down.

“A mine and a road only Hopis know about? What’s the secret?” she asked. “What makes you think the bats are here?”